It is a story of social change (but also of hostility to that attempt at renewal) that will be brought to the stage by the Arca Azzurra company, directed by Dimitri Frosali, on Sunday, Oct. 14, at 9:15 p.m., at the Multipurpose Hall of the Convent of the Parish of the Servants of Mary at Poggerina (Figline).
The initiative(show "The Three Friars") was born from the encounter between themunicipality's need to publicize an event that, more than forty years ago, deeply affected public opinion in Figlino and Arca Azzurra's willingness to bring it to the stage, winning in collaboration with the Department of Culture a call for bids from the Metropolitan City of Florence, aimed at financing projects to promote local history.
It was the expulsion of the Ponterosso friars, dated Aug. 8, 1977, which meant the transfer to Poggerina of three friars from the Congregation of the Servants of Mary, who had arrived in Figline in the 1960s.
And it was precisely in the wake of the change that also affected the Church in those years - brought into the Congregation by Father Davide Turoldo, as well as by Don Milani and Father Balducci - that the three friars and the parish council began from the very beginning to introduce important changes in their relations with the village community and institutions .
Examples include catechesis for adults, the rejection of the practice of donation by families to the fathers at funeral anniversaries, house blessings, baptisms, weddings and funerals, and cooperation with the municipality, to which they would have liked to cede the premises of the clubhouse adjacent to the church in order to build a public kindergarten.
This wave of renewal, however, caused dissension and ill-feeling within civil society and the ecclesiastical world, so much so that it triggered public mobilization in defense of the friars, the convening of an open city council, and finally the relocation of the friars to Poggerina Parish in Celle, an area that was isolated and out of the way at the time.
The friars then found themselves managing a disused church that, up to that time, had been used as a warehouse and chicken coop by a local farmer. Today, the parish continues to be active, and many of the citizens who started it in 1977 also participate in its activities. Admission to the performance is free.
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